I'm amazed that a game guide could be this expensive — it's half the price of the game itself, for goodness sake! It's also more than double the price on Amazon US, so there's a huge amount of gouging going on in Australia.

I've never bought a guide for a game in 20 years of gaming, so I guess I can't understand the need for such things. There's more than ample information of the web already about this game, and there'll be more than you'll ever need in the coming weeks.

All of you have a solid point about being able to just play the game and discover things for yourself, not to mention have access to the Internet and the convinience of looking things up for free but you guys should be more open minded about this deal. It was posted up with good intention to inform people who are interested about the guide. If its not your thing then that's fair enough. But don't be judgemental. Everyone has their own preferences.

I think the guide would be good to look at while/after you've played the game. You could discover new things that aren't necessarily spoilers or just read about some cool areas, maybe even read about an area you went to before but forgot a room full of treasure :)

I had a look at this at BigW the other night, looks pretty good. I do appreciate a good Game Guide for Bethesda games. Mainly so I don't miss anything :)

Apart from that, the map ingame is pretty crap, and the map with the book shows everything in great detail.

The other thing you have to remember is this is a Bethesda game and doesn't like being Alt-Tab'd (tested already, not great) so wiki'ing it up isn't going to be too much fun.

In terms of being outdated, this guide has had 2000 man hours of gameplay go into compiling it and doing everything (including input from the developers), so it's all good. The only thing it won't have is DLC, but since I don't believe in DLC (and who really needs horse armour)…

Got the Hardcover version for about $3 more than Big W are trying to sell the cheaper one for. That said, it hasn't posted and they suggest it'll probably be 19th-24th that they put it in the post. So you're probably better off. It's definitely something you want when you start the game to help you know how your decisions now will affect your eventual character.